


A Single Breath

by Grey_Amethyst



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Warnings, Gen, Gore, Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:18:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7307236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grey_Amethyst/pseuds/Grey_Amethyst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikasa finds Armin. There's no time to grieve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Single Breath

She rushes to Armin first because that dim ache in her head refuses to believe this is real. Eren hasn’t moved at all.

A few seconds makes a world of difference, another pound of pressure would have beheaded Bertolt back on Wall Rosé, but there is no room for regrets and the pork-like scent of burnt flesh is burrowing deep inside her.

“Jean, take the Colossal Titan,” Squad Leader Hanji says behind her, and Mikasa hears Eren’s frantic footsteps follow.

At Armin’s side, she kneels. The blisters on her knuckles are so small compared to his exposed muscle; the scalding pain at her every breath numbs itself against the wisps of steam still trailing from Armin’s blackened hands. The smell is familiar, but Mikasa isn’t sure whether that’s from her familiarity with fresh corpses or from running past houses billowing smoke in the evacuation from Shiganshina. She thinks of salt, the prick of it on her tongue after breaking skin inside her cheek or as sweat dribbles down her nose and onto her lips. She thinks of the ocean, so immense you cannot see the shore on the other side, so deep you can harvest from it a thousand times and never have it depleted.

Mikasa drops her head to Armin’s chest. At the very least, she might spare him any further suffering.

Further down the roof, Connie, still carrying Sasha, mutters wordlessly. Past Armin’s melted boots, Jean watches with eyes pulled wide. Squad Leader Hanji is tying a second gag for the Colossal Titan. Their captives, mutilated and disarmed, are unable to turn in her direction even if they weren’t being held down.

Mikasa listens. Eren is breathing so loud. She listens, the blood of her face cold, and hears a thin, slow, rattled sigh.

She lifts her head from her friend’s skinless chest, leaving tendrils of muscle and fatty slime stuck to her chin up to the corner of her frozen eyes as she stares across Armin and toward Eren, his face streaked with furious tears.

“He’s still breathing.”

Eren exhales thickly, face contorting with grief. Mikasa looks at Armin, thinking furiously of a way to do this without destroying his body further; Eren is already tucking closer, hands reaching for their friend's charred, hairless head before thinking better of it and breathing quick and wet, searching again for any part of Armin that isn't hurt.

He never finds one. Someone, maybe Jean, cries out, “There! On the wall!” Mikasa hears her comrades scramble a bit, and she goes for her blades instinctively, stopping inches from slotting them in her handles when she sees it.

The Ape Titan smiles down at them, a hairy, indulgent perversion of the Colossal Titan before it. He has lifted himself up this far, and Mikasa keeps track of the harsh breaths around her as she gauges the situation. They can't let their captives go now, not after Armin's sacrifice, but all she knows of this titan is his aim. His palms are bare as he hoists himself onto the wall, toes curling long over the edge.

Mikasa watches the Ape Titan glance over her allies in turn. She thinks quickly in the absence of Armin's wit. If they flee on Eren's titan form, the Ape Titan can slide down the wall and fling debris at his defenseless back.  She wonders if the seconds she and Eren added to regrouping by checking Armin doomed them. Her heart burns deep in her chest.

Then she senses a different tension mount around her. Not bloodlust, though Eren emits it in waves, but deeper and more horrible than fear. It makes her shudder, but only for an instant, and her determination to protect Eren and her remaining friends launches to the forefront of her senses.

Mikasa is unsheathing her blades when she hears a body topple behind her. Sasha's, judging by Connie’s curse that is cut off by a sharp gasp.

The Ape Titan looks to her, its eyes dark and unblinking.

Mikasa glances at Eren, seeing the unwavering fury in his eyes, at just the moment to catch Armin's leg twitch, just a flutter in his thigh as a single functional muscle spasms.

Her blood pounds in her ears. Through the haze, Squad Leader Hanji chokes, “What—is—?”  
  
Mikasa drops her blades back, grabs Eren's arm, and makes for the edge of the building, rushing past their comrades bent over their knees and shaking. In her peripheral vision, a limbless Bertolt stares at Jean, the one closest to him, with haunted, unseeing eyes. Reiner uselessly flounders toward the edge of the roof, making strained sounds through his gag.

“We can't leave him, we can't,” Eren says through his shocked sobs.

Mikasa looks back to check if the Monkey Titan has descended.

It beams back at her, smiling with starkly white teeth.

She doesn't have enough time to jump before five lightning strikes rain down.


End file.
